Pages

▼

Saturday, January 31, 2026

01/31 Links: The new Holocaust revisionism; 'Hamas planned to hold Israeli hostages for 10 years'; Gaza ‘doctor’ who slammed Israel in NY Times op-eds is Hamas colonel

From Ian:

Dave Rich: The new Holocaust revisionism
It is striking just how much these arguments, on left and right, have in common, even though they are diametrically opposed in so many ways. Mishra, for instance, seems to suggest that Holocaust memory has been used to keep the doors of western power firmly closed to outsiders. Cooper, meanwhile, believes Holocaust commemoration has flung those doors wide open, enabling mass immigration and the dilution of white, western societies. Despite these profound differences, however, both appear to share the belief that, as the international order that has shaped our world since 1945 comes apart, the status of the Holocaust in our moral and cultural imagination is central to the question of what will follow.

While establishment politicians and institutions continue to treat the Holocaust as the pivotal moral event of the 20th century, out in the discursive undergrowth ever-larger audiences increasingly seek alternative explanations for the world, and radical visions of how to remake it. In these circles, the sanctity of Holocaust commemoration is what makes it such an enticing target. “Are we closer”, Mishra writes, “to finding a replacement for the Shoah as a universal symbol of human and moral evil?”

Why this all matters ought to be obvious. The late Yehuda Bauer, one of the great scholars of antisemitism and the Holocaust, warned many years ago that “a reversion back to ’normalcy’ regarding Jews requires the destruction of the Holocaust-caused attitude of sympathy”. It is not difficult to find evidence that this reversion to an antisemitic “normalcy” is occurring. Last year, the massacre of Jews celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach, following the killing of two Jews at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, and the shooting of two Israeli embassy employees outside the Jewish Museum in Washington DC in May, were just the latest lethal incidents in a global surge of hatred that itself feels like the end of an era. Jews have been shot, stabbed, kidnapped and burnt, and synagogues and schools torched on multiple continents since the 7th October attack. Less visible is the daily grind of racist comments, slurs and exclusions that never make the news but lead Jews to shrink inwards and rethink their futures. Almost a third of all British Jews were directly targeted with antisemitic violence, harassment or abuse in 2024, according to polling from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

The rise of antisemitism, conspiracy-driven populism and authoritarian demagoguery makes Holocaust commemoration more essential than ever. But there is an urgent need to rethink how it is done. The long-held fear that it would become harder to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive once the last of the survivors are no longer with us might soon be surpassed by a greater danger: that people stop thinking the Holocaust matters, not because they don’t know what happened, but because they no longer care.

Perhaps “Never Again” was always a forlorn hope. It implies an optimistic assumption of progress, as if we can leave unwanted human behaviours and attitudes in the past, when history—and the current Jewish reality—suggests the opposite is true. Still, whether the existing international order survives this crisis or not, the memory and dignity of the six million who were murdered, and the vital lessons for humanity that we take from that darkest of times, must not be sacrificed in the process.
Gal Hirsch: 'Hamas planned to hold Israeli hostages for 10 years'
Hamas planned to keep Israeli hostages for as long as a decade, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch said in an in-depth interview, describing what he called the terror group’s long game of using captives, living and dead, as strategic leverage meant to grind down Israel over years.

Hirsch, whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed on October 8, 2023, as coordinator for the captives and missing, said his own internal assessment early on pointed to a far shorter timeline than Hamas’s, yet still measured in years. “I thought it would take double,” he said. “At least four years.”

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, he also disclosed that Israel repeatedly prepared covert hostage rescue missions that never took place. Some were canceled because planners doubted they could succeed, he said, and others were shelved out of concern that rescuing one captive could endanger others held nearby. “If there was doubt about success,” Hirsch said, “take them out through negotiations, even if it takes time.”

The interview came days after Israeli forces recovered the remains of police officer Ran Gvili from Gaza, a development that, according to Israeli officials and multiple reports, closed the file on those abducted on October 7, 2023, whose whereabouts remained unresolved. Hirsch recalled calling Netanyahu with the update and telling him, in English, “Mission accomplished.”
Gaza ‘doctor’ who slammed Israel in NY Times op-eds is Hamas colonel, seen in military uniform: watchdog, IDF
A Gaza doctor who slammed Israel in a pair of New York Times op-eds is a colonel with terror group Hamas, according to an Israeli watchdog group and the Israeli Defense Forces.

Hussam Abu Safyia was photographed wearing a Hamas camo military uniform while at a gathering of Hamas elites to celebrate the completion of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in 2016, according to the Jerusalem-based watchdog NGO Monitor.

Safyia’s photo appeared on the Gaza Medical Services‘ Facebook page — a group overseen by the Hamas-run health ministry.

The ceremony was attended by ranking members of the brutal terror group, including Gen. Abu Obaida Al-Jarrah, Director of Military Medical Services Saeed Saoudi and National Security Forces commander Col. Naeem Al-Ghoul, according to the post.

Following Hamas’ massacre of over 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, which led to the war in Gaza, Safyia penned two screeds in the Times bashing Israel on Oct. 29, 2023, and Dec. 2, 2024.

“We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip,” Safyia wrote in one op-ed.

Critics decried media giving the alleged Hamas member any ink.

“Those who platformed Abu Safyia must do some serious soul-searching, and figure out how they ended up promoting the propaganda of a literal Hamas terrorist,” NGO Monitor senior researcher Vincent Chebat said.

The Times referred to the colonel as a “pediatrician and the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza” in each op-ed.

An IDF spokesman said Safyia was a ranking member of Hamas, and that the hospital was teeming with hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.

Neither NGO Monitor nor the IDF accused Safyia of participating in any specific terrorist acts.


Former army chief calls for Australia to build its own Iron Dome amid threats of global attacks
A former defence chief is leading calls for Australia to develop its own Iron Dome-style missile defence system, warning the nation is vulnerable to attacks from adversaries thousands of kilometres away.

Retired Chief of Army Peter Leahy says Australia must be able to stop a missile attack before it hits, calling for an Australian dome shield system to protect the nation.

“Australia can no longer rely on geography. We can no longer rely on the sea air gap,” Leahy warned.

The battlefield technology has saved countless lives overseas, with missile defence systems like Israel’s Iron Dome successfully intercepting incoming attacks.

But in Australia, the potential threat is growing.

“The potential is that it could happen here. And in many ways, we’re defenceless,” Leahy said.

Malcolm Davis from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says adversaries now have missiles that can reach Australia from thousands of kilometres away, and the nation has nothing to stop them.

“Time is not our friend. And so therefore we do need to move very fast,” Davis said.

Health Minister Mark Butler said if the government receives advice from defence officials, political leaders will look at it very closely.

7NEWS can vouch for the Iron Dome technology, which saved the lives of a news crew from a Hamas rocket attack two years ago in Israel.

But Australia is 350 times bigger than Israel, raising questions about how a missile shield system would protect the nation’s vast expanses.


IDF kills Hamas, Islamic Jihad terrorists after Gaza truce violation
The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday that it struck four commanders and additional terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad across the Gaza Strip, in response to a ceasefire violation the previous day in which terrorists were identified exiting tunnels in eastern Rafah.

The military said it also struck a Hamas weapons storage facility, an arms manufacturing plant and two launch sites in central Gaza.

“The terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip systematically violate international law, brutally exploiting civilian infrastructure and the Gazan population as human shields for terrorist activities,” the IDF said.

The military added that Jerusalem views any violation of the agreement with “utmost seriousness” and will continue to act against any attempt to carry out terrorist attacks against IDF troops and civilians of the State of Israel.

IDF soldiers overnight Thursday identified eight terrorists emerging from underground infrastructure in Rafah, southern Gaza, prompting an airstrike that killed at least three of them, the military said on Friday.

The Israeli Air Force carried out additional strikes against areas where the remaining terrorists attempted to flee, the IDF added.
32 Gazans said killed in wave of strikes as IDF responds to truce violation
At least 32 Palestinians, including women, children and Hamas police officers, were reported killed in a wave of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Saturday morning — one of the highest death tolls since the October ceasefire — as the Israeli military confirmed it targeted terror commanders and infrastructure in response to what it called a “violation of the ceasefire agreement.”

The Israel Defense Forces said its strikes targeted four commanders in the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups, as well as a weapons depot, an arms manufacturing site and two rocket launching positions.

“The terror organizations in the Strip systematically violate international law, while brutally exploiting civilian institutions and operating in the presence of the local population,” the military said in a statement.

Hamas’s civil defense agency said it had retrieved the bodies of 32 people killed in seven different locations since Saturday morning. Hamas authorities claimed that around a quarter of those killed were children, about a third were women, one was an elderly man and five were officers in the Hamas-run police force.

The Hamas-run health ministry reported another 30 people wounded, some in critical condition.

The tolls could not be independently verified, and Israel did not release its own casualty figures.


IDF slays Hezbollah operative in Southern Lebanon
The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday killed a Hezbollah terrorist who was engaged in efforts to rebuild the terror group’s military infrastructure in the Markaba area in southeastern Lebanon.

“The terrorist’s actions constituted a violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said in a statement.

On Friday, the IDF struck engineering vehicles and other assets used by Hezbollah to reestablish terrorist infrastructure in the Mazraat al-Daoudiya area of Southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s use of the equipment constituted a violation of the ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon, the military said.

“The IDF will continue to operate to remove any threat to the State of Israel and to prevent Hezbollah’s reestablishment,” it added.


Ask Haviv Anything: Episode 85: How knowing your story makes you invincible, with Noam Weissman
In these strange times, it is easier than ever for a Jew to learn -- and easier than ever to remain ignorant. We sit down with Dr. Noam Weissman, executive vice president of the educational nonprofit Open Dor Media, to tackle a looming crisis: a generation of Jews who no longer know their own story. From Harvard Law students paralyzed by campus slogans to the staggering reality that 62% of Jewish day school students cannot define Zionism, this episode exposes the "malpractice" of outdated advocacy and offers a better blueprint for the future. What would a better Israel education look like? Haviv and Noam explore how history and identity can transform a vulnerable community into an invincible one—shifting the next generation from passive spectators in the stands to active players in the Jewish game.

Chapters
00:00 The Importance of Jewish Identity Education
10:26 Understanding the Crisis of Jewish Knowledge
18:06 The Evolution of Israel Education
31:28 The Future of Jewish Education and Identity
33:34 History Education as a Foundation for Identity
38:59 Challenges Beyond Day Schools
41:50 The Role of Jewish Camps and Online Education
47:36 Building a Unified Jewish Educational Approach
54:07 Engaging the Next Generation of Jews


UKLFI: Natasha Hausdorff criticises failures to confront antisemitism and radicalisation in Europe
In this excerpt from a panel session at Israel's International Conference on Combating Antisemitism on 27 January 2026 in Jerusalem, UKLFI Charitable Trust's Legal Director, Natasha Hausdorff, criticises failures to combat antisemitism and radicalisation in Europe, including the treatment of Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans, the failure to implement recommendations of a UK government report on the Muslim Brotherhood, and the lack of prosecutions of Hamas members based in the UK.


Jonny Gould's Jewish State: 197: From Soviet Shadows to Campus Hate: Izabella Tabarovsky on How Anti-Zionism Targets All Jews Today.
Parents, if you're about to send your child to university, how are you preparing them for it?

Western campuses aren't all what they used to be.

In this powerful conversation, I meet the brilliant Izabella Tabarovsky — a leading scholar on Soviet antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and author of Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide.

Izabella grew up under the Soviet system, where 'anti-Zionism' was the official line — and it quickly turned into suspicion of all Jews, Zionist or not.

"Jews who grew up in the Soviet Union know well their copybook is being repeated here", says Izabella.

And Israel hate doesn’t distinguish between the Jewish State or its diaspora or your child, the institutions become anti-Zionist, so all Jews are suspect.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Zionist or not.

They don’t even understand what Zionists are. When they speak about Zionists they mean you and me.

The Iron Curtain hate of the Cold War-era has resurfaced in universities in the UK, US, Europe, and beyond — dressed up in modern language, but delivering the same chilling results: isolation, hostility, and erasure of Jewish identity.

What does this mean for your son or daughter heading off in their first weeks away from home? How can families prepare? What lessons from Soviet refuseniks can help Jewish students thrive — or simply survive — in today's environment?

Izabella breaks it down with unflinching clarity: the patterns, the propaganda echoes, and practical steps parents and students must take now.

This isn't just history repeating — it's a wake-up call for the present.


Marty Supreme actress Odessa A'zion quits new film after casting backlash
Jewish actress Odessa A'zion has pulled out of an upcoming film after an online backlash to her being cast as a character with Mexican heritage.

A'zion, who stars alongside Timothée Chalamet in the Oscar-nominated Marty Supreme, had been cast to play a character with Jewish and Mexican heritage, Zoe Gutierrez, in the film adaptation of bestselling 2025 romance novel Deep Cuts.

But fans of the book objected to the casting, arguing the role should have gone to a Latin American actress.

A’zion, who is Jewish and from the US, has now publicly walked away from the production and apologised for accepting the role, saying she would “never take a role from someone else that’s meant to do it.”

Posting on Instagram, A'zion said: “I am with all of you and I am not doing this movie ...Thank you guys for bringing this to my attention. I’m so sorry that this happened. I went in [to audition] for [another role] but was offered Zoe instead and instantly said yes ... I hadn’t read the book and should have paid attention to all aspects of Zoe before accepting… and now that I know what I know? F*** that. I’m out!”

She added: “I’d never take a role from someone else that’s meant to do it … That’s not me. There [are plenty] of people more than capable of playing this role, and I am not one of them. I can’t wait to see who it ends up being.”


‘Tell that to the Palestinians, Keir’: Greens spokesperson’s Holocaust Memorial Day response sparks fury
The Green Party’s equalities and diversity spokesperson responded to a post by the Prime Minister repeating the words “Never Again” as he recalled the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust by writing: “Tell that to the Palestinians, Keir.”

Sharmen Rahman, who was appointed the national spokesperson for Equalities and Diversity last August, and who was the parliamentary candidate for Leicester South, made the comments on January 27—Holocaust Memorial Day—after Keir Starmer posted on social media about the need to confront antisemitism and remember the Holocaust as “one of the darkest stains on humanity.”

Starmer had noted that the Holocaust “stands as one of the darkest stains on humanity: the systematic murder of six million Jews, each one an individual life extinguished by a hatred that sought to erase the entire Jewish people” and called for antisemitism to be challenged whereever it appears, to ensure “never again” meant exactly that.

Rahman replied: “And ensure that ‘never again’ is a promise we uphold, not just a phrase we repeat. Tell that to the Palestinians, Keir.”

Rahman also subsequently reposted the Green Party’s official statement for Holocaust Memorial Day, which referenced “those murdered during the Holocaust and all genocides,” but did not specifically mention the six million Jewish victims.

Critics, including Jewish groups, noted and objected to the omission.

The controversy deepened after Rahman defended Hannah Spencer, the party’s Gorton and Denton by-election candidate, who had posted: “Never again but still selling arms to Israel,” above a photo of Labour’s Angela Rayner lighting a Shoah memorial candle.

When Jewish News exclusively reported on Spencer’s comments, Rahman stated: “demanding action against a genocide is not a ‘Holocaust smear’, it is how we apply the lessons we have been taught about this monstrous crime against humanity. That ‘Never Again’ means never again.”

It also emerged that Spencer had retweeted a post by Rahman describing Rayner’s visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as “performative” and referencing the “real live ongoing genocide” in Gaza, suggesting that lessons from the Holocaust had gone unlearned.


Met admits it failed to protect Jews from ‘racist mob’ in Notting Hill
The Metropolitan Police has admitted that it failed to protect Jews from a “racist mob” at a Notting Hill restaurant.

Scotland Yard has apologised for the “distress” caused to the Israeli business owner and “wider Jewish community” over its policing of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last month.

The apology came after a cross-party group of 89 MPs and peers wrote to Sir Mark Rowley, the Met Commissioner, to express their “extreme concern” about the way protests outside the restaurant were policed.

They said the restaurant, Erev, and its takeaway counter, Miznon, in Notting Hill, co-founded by chef Eyal Shani, had been “targeted by extremists on seven occasions since August last year”.

The letter, seen by The Telegraph, goes on to detail one of the protests, which took place on Jan 9. The signatories said it amounted to “violent disorder” and left diners at the restaurant feeling intimidated.

The MPs and peers described how “around 50 protesters were allowed by police to stand close to the restaurant’s entrance, chanting violent and intimidating slogans amplified by loudspeakers and drums”.

Footage shared on social media at the time of the protest showed one activist proclaiming the “right to resist by any and all means necessary, for the full liberation and from the river to the sea”, to cheers from the crowd.

The “From the river to the sea” chant has been interpreted by many as a call for the destruction of Israel, although some pro-Palestinian groups say it refers to the right of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to freedom.

The letter to Sir Mark, the signatories to which include several Labour MPs, said this was “targeted harassment and intimidation of a Jewish business by a racist mob, not a legitimate protest”.
Peter Tatchell arrested at London march for holding placard that read ‘globalise the intifada’
Activist Peter Tatchell has been arrested at a pro-Palestine march in central London for having a placard that read “globalise the intifada”, his foundation said.

The human rights campaigner was carrying a sign that read “Globalise the intifada: Non-violent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank” at the Palestine Coalition protest on Saturday.

In a statement released by the Peter Tatchell Foundation, the 74-year-old said the arrest was “an attack on free speech”.

He said: “The police claimed the word intifada is unlawful. The word intifada is not a crime in law. The police are engaged in over-reach by making it an arrestable offence. This is part of a dangerous trend to increasingly restrict and criminalise peaceful protests.

“The Arab word intifada means uprising, rebellion or resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It does not mean violence and is not antisemitic. It is against the Israeli regime and its war crimes, not against Jewish people.”


Encyclopaedia Britannica ‘erases’ Israel from children’s history lessons
Encyclopaedia Britannica has been accused of erasing Israel from its educational material for children.

Supporters of Israel say the Jewish state was removed and replaced with Palestine on a map of the region published by the encyclopaedia’s Britannica Kids edition.

The legal lobby group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) wrote to the US publishers of Encyclopaedia Britannica demanding it make urgent revisions to its material.

One of its chief concerns was a map which showed a mass of land it defined as Palestine covering the area of Israel’s internationally recognised borders.

UKLFI accused Encyclopaedia Britannica of promoting the controversial “from the river to the sea” definition of Palestine.

The caption for the map stated in the present tense: “The name Palestine refers to a region in the Middle East. The region lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.”

The map made no distinction between the state of Israel and the neighbouring West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, which are generally considered to be the borders of the State of Palestine recognised by the UK Government and others.

Another entry in the Britannia Kids material reads: “The name Palestine has long been in popular use as a general term to denote a traditional region, but this usage does not imply precise boundaries. The perception of what constitutes Palestine’s eastern boundary has been especially fluid, although the boundary frequently has been perceived as lying east of the Jordan River, extending at times to the edge of the Arabian Desert.

“In contemporary understanding, however, Palestine is generally defined as a region bounded on the east by the Jordan River, on the north by the border between modern Israel and Lebanon, on the west by the Mediterranean Sea (including the coast of Gaza), and on the south by the Negev, with its southernmost extension reaching the Gulf of Aqaba.”

UKLFI claimed these definitions echoed pro-Palestine “from the river to the sea” slogans widely interpreted as calling for the destruction of Israel and denying the right of Jews to their own state, though others dispute that meaning and the phrase is not banned in the UK.

In its letter to Encyclopaedia Britannica, UKLFI stated: “These descriptions effectively erase the existence of Israel, which in fact lies between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean sea. By defining Palestine as extending uninterrupted from the river to the sea, the entries closely mirror the language and geographic framing of contemporary activist slogans such as ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’.

“This phrase has been widely used as a rallying cry for Palestinian terrorist groups and is contained in the 2017 charter of the Hamas terrorist group, which led the October 7 attacks on Israel.”
BBC DOCUMENTARY SEES A TWO-SIDED PEACE MOVEMENT BUT A ONE SIDED WAR
On the 9th December The BBC documentary Podcast aired an episode titled “The Struggle of Israel’s Peace Movement” which follows four members of Standing Together, an organisation made up of Arab and Jewish Israelis who campaign for peace. However, the episode erased almost entirely the reasons that a peace movement needs to exist – that is, decades of conflict and terrorism. Instead, we are given once again a frozen in time narrative, that the only Israeli victims of the conflict were victims on October 7th, that the only act of Palestinian violence that has ever taken place was October 7th, and that Israeli society is uniquely militaristic and engaged in arbritrary subjugation of its Palestinian neighbours. This begs the question of course, if there was no war before October 7th, why did the Peace Movement exist at all.

The episode opens in Judea and Samaria, where the group are protecting Palestinians harvesting olives:
Wither: “Alon Lee Green is a Jewish Israeli and the national co-director of Standing Together, a mixed grass roots peace movement of both Israelis and Palestinians. They’ve spent the last two years campaigning for a ceasefire in Gaza, now they’re shifting their focus to rising violence in the west bank. The UN says there’s been more than 150 documented attacks by settlers on the olive harvest this year.”

What presenter Emily Wither fails to mention alongside those 150 reported attacks is the INSS figures which record 11,569 Palestinian terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria since October 7th, including 87 Israeli fatalities.

She goes on:
Wither: “Jewish settlers have built around 160 of these settlements since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War. This is land the Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state. It’s now home to 700,000 Jews who live alongside an es

timated 3.3 million Palestinians. Most of the world considers Israeli settlements as illegal under international law. Israel disagrees and far right settlers now sit in the heart of the Israeli government. They say the

land was promised to them by God, and the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich says building settlements will bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

This framing, including the deeply misleading mantra of “illegal under international law” which CAMERA has previously established contradicts the BBC Editorial Guidelines leaves a listener with an impression that all settlers are “far right” and engaged in religious extremism in land they believe was “promised to them by God” an opinion which they know their audience will view as irrational within their own cultural context, particularly in the UK. She doesn’t mention the 3000-year continuous Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, or that the land was occupied by Jordan prior to 1967, or that it is specifically illegal for Israeli citizens to enter areas under Palestinian Authority control. Once again what emerges is a one-sided narrative of religious settlers annexing Palestinian land, while the Palestinians themselves have no agency, no governance of their own areas under the Oslo agreement, and no responsibility.
Spain court probed alleged Hamas crypto financing tied to hair salon near Barcelona
Spain’s high court for major criminal cases opened an investigation into a 38-year-old man accused of sending about €600,000 in cryptocurrency transfers to digital addresses allegedly linked to an entity used by Hamas, according to police and multiple Spanish media reports.

The suspect, described by investigators as a Chinese national who ran a hair salon in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, was detained on Tuesday, and later released pending proceedings, with restrictions that included surrendering his passport and reporting regularly to court, Spanish outlets reported.

The investigation was overseen by Spain’s Audiencia Nacional and carried out by Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalonia regional police. Authorities said they documented at least 31 crypto transfers, carried out from wallets controlled by the suspect, to addresses linked to the suspected Hamas-related entity.

Spanish police said the case started in June 2025 as a separate probe into alleged fraud and money laundering, before investigators flagged the cryptocurrency activity and escalated the matter into a terrorism-financing investigation.

During searches of the suspect’s home and business, investigators said they seized more than €100,000 in cash, luxury jewelry, roughly 9,000 cigars, computers, and mobile phones, and they froze bank accounts and crypto assets. Police and Spanish media reported the combined value of seized and blocked assets exceeded €370,000.

Police declined to comment on the suspect’s possible motives or whether he knowingly interacted with Hamas or served as an intermediary, citing the sensitivity of the investigation.
Six killed in two explosions across Iran, Israel denies involvement
Five people were killed, and 14 were reportedly injured in two blasts that rocked Iran’s port city of Bandar Abbas and Ahvaz.

Further explosions were reported in Karaj, and the Parand neighborhood of Tehran.

According to a Reuters report citing local officials, one person was killed and 14 were injured in the Bandar Abbas blast. An additional five people were confirmed dead from blasts in Ahvaz, Iran International reported.

Both explosions in Bandar Abbas and Ahvaz were caused by a gas leak, Iranian authorities claimed.

"Following a gas explosion in a four-unit building in Kianshahr, four members of a family, including the father, mother, and their two children, lost their lives," Ahvaz's city's Fire Department chief said, as reported by Iran International.

Reports of an additional explosion in Parand were denied by the governor of Robat Karim, who, according to state-run Mehr News Agency, alleged that the source of widespread smoke reported across the city was "a fire in dried reed beds along the banks of the Shur River" rather than an explosion.

The governor added that "there is no cause for concern for residents" and that relevant authorities are investigating the matter as an "environmentally harmful action."

Israel was not involved in the Iran blasts, two Israeli officials told Reuters. A separate security source told N12 News that Israel and the US are not currently conducting activity in the region, and that the blasts were likely due to an “internal incident."

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.


NPR Interviews Son of Former Iranian Foreign Minister on Iran Protests, Presents Him as 'Son of Iranian Parents'
As reports began to emerge in mid-January detailing the extent of the brutality of the Iranian regime's crackdown on protesters, NPR's Morning Edition aired an interview with a guest, introduced as a Johns Hopkins professor and the "son of Iranian parents," who offered a first-person account.

Host Steve Inskeep said the professor, Youseph Yazdi, had a "rare first-person account of the protests sweeping that country." Inskeep did not mention to NPR listeners that Yazdi is also the son of the former Iranian foreign minister Ebrahim Yazdi, who served as one of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's closest advisers and as the regime's first minister of foreign affairs before becoming a dissident inside Iran.

Mark Bowden's account of the Iranian hostage crisis, Guests of the Ayatollah, recounts that leading up to the revolution, Ebrahim Yazdi was "Khomeini's man in America" and helped form "a brain trust around Khomeini when he was in the last months of his exile in Paris."

Yazdi was meeting with American chargé d'affaires Bruce Laingen inside the Iranian foreign ministry in 1979 when revolutionaries stormed the American embassy and took American diplomats hostage. When Laingen pleaded with him to help save the embassy and said Yazdi was obligated to do so under the rules of international diplomacy, according to Bowden, Yazdi responded, "Calm down. I told you so"—that is, that the seizure of the embassy was a predictable response to the U.S. decision to admit the shah for cancer treatment. Laingen and two others were ultimately turned over to the hostage-takers and held hostage. Yazdi resigned from the cabinet the following day and went on to become an internal critic of the regime.

In his interview with NPR, Youseph Yazdi made no mention of the mounting death count and suggested that the protesters—or, as he put it at one point, "trained agitators"—had it coming. "They pulled some pavers up from the sidewalk and started throwing him [sic] at the riot police, and then the riot police responded with tear gas," he said. Peaceful protesters, he said, are "no match for either trained riot police or trained agitators who want to escalate the violence."

Of the regime's forces, who we now know have murdered upward of 30,000 people, Yazdi said, "They have batons, and they have tear gas launchers, is their main thing. They have these, you know, CS gas, tear gas canister launchers, and they could fire them hundreds of feet. So they use those a lot. And one of the protesters picked up the tear gas and threw it back. And it's hot because it has projectile, you know, stuff in it like a firecracker to make it fly in the air."

He added that, if protesters merely kept things nonviolent, the government "will lose."

"But if it's a nonviolent protest, the government will lose," Yazdi said. "The power will be more in the hands of the people."


Nazi-era teen girl’s diary charts unraveling of France — and her prominent Jewish family
On the morning of June 23, 1940, 12-year-old Ninette Dreyfus’s family learned that Hitler had forced France into a humiliating armistice the previous evening.

Her father’s reaction to the news was visceral and physical. Edgar Dreyfus collapsed on the stairs, suffering an asthma attack and struggling to breathe. “I had never seen him show weakness before. For a moment, I feared he was going to die,” Ninette later recalled. “The whole world of my childhood was falling apart.”

But unbeknownst to Ninette, her father, or France’s Jews, much worse was to come.

Released in paperback in the UK on January 22, “Ninette’s War: A Jewish Story of Survival in 1940s France” tells the remarkable wartime odyssey of one of France’s most prominent Jewish families — and the Vichy regime’s knowing complicity in the Nazis’ crimes.

The story has been painstakingly pieced together — like “restoring a mosaic” — by British journalist John Jay, drawing on Ninette’s youthful diary entries, family papers, and interviews she gave to the author in the years before her death in 2021.

As Jay makes clear, Edgar’s reaction to news of the armistice did not reflect a sense of foreboding about the likely fate awaiting his family.

“He was completely dumbfounded that the mighty French army could collapse in the way that it had done,” he tells The Times of Israel. “French Jews at that point had no idea of what subsequently was going to hit them.”

Jay’s book tracks Edgar’s growing sense of disbelief and horror at Vichy’s brutal betrayal of France’s Jews.

The Dreyfus family — second only in influence to the Rothschilds in Parisian Jewish society — were, Jay says, a “classic cosmopolitan, Jewish Western European family, a mixture of Bohemians, Germans and Frenchmen.”

They were also fiercely patriotic and loyal to the French state, which, by and large, had treated French Jewry well. Edgar ran a bank owned by the family firm, La Maison, which had provided loans to help France’s war effort after 1914. A decade later, Edgar acceded to the government’s request to help fight off an inflation-induced run on the franc. He was made an officer of the Légion d’honneur in recognition of his services.

In their grand 16th arrondissement townhouse — which had once been owned by composer Claude Debussy — Ninette, her elder sister Viviane and parents Edgar and Yvonne lived a life of plenty and privilege. The family were secular and, until the outbreak of war, Ninette barely knew what being a Jew was. Occasional antisemitic playground slurs had little meaning for her.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 

at